During a Twitterdiscussion, I mentioned that some organizations want to improve business operations without change or cost. This ridiculous perspective implies that meaningful improvements arise effortlessly of their own accord, as if through magical or divine intervention. Amazingly, such attitudes are common and underlie many project failures.

A blog post from perlmonks.org directly addresses this point. Technical consultant, brian d foy (no caps), says some of his clients seem to want a super-human, such as actor Chuck Norris, to save them:

Chuck Norris is the man who can do anything, and the universe is afraid of him. Not just the people in the universe, the actual universe itself. [His] abilities are collected in Chuck Norris Facts, which include:

Chuck Norris doesn't read books. He stares them down until he gets the information he wants.

Chuck Norris' hand is the only hand that can beat a Royal Flush.

Chuck Norris can lead a horse to water AND make it drink.

Chuck Norris doesn't wear a watch, HE decides what time it is.

Brian groups his clients into three categories; the first only needs a gentle nudge to get their project moving:

It's not always that the client doesn't know [how to solve their problem], but that they need someone else to say it for them. The tech people convince the managers by having us confirm what they have been saying. In other cases, they just need a little push in the right direction.

The second group has the will to change and improve, but seems too disorganized to get things done:

There is this weird sub-group of companies who pay consultants for answers they never intend to use. They know what they need to do but have some social roadblocks to solve.

Brian's third group of clients closely matches those I discussed in the Twitter conversation referenced at the top of this post:

This brings us to another, even smaller group [that] wants us to make everything better without changing anything (anything at all), as if we could "chuck norris" the situation: